Why I Created ChatGPT Thread Starters for Small Businesses

Why I Spent Months Turning Years of Small Business Experience Into ChatGPT Thread Starters

I've been hanging around small-business communities since 2018 and have been coaching business owners since 2020. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that most small-business owners don't have a shortage of ideas they have a shortage of time, money, and people who can actually help them get things finished. I've watched people spend three days trying to write one social media post, make beautiful products and then have absolutely no idea how to sell them, buy another course, download another worksheet, and save another hundred marketing tips while the products they already made sit there collecting dust.

I've had more conversations than I can count with people who were completely overwhelmed because they couldn't figure out what to work on next. Different businesses. Different products. Different people. A whole lot of the same problems.

Then along came ChatGPT

In May 2025, I found myself in a situation I wasn’t particularly comfortable with like it made me sweat bullets. The morning I was to ask a question on the zoom live well my laptop wouldn't turn on and I had to run to good ole Wally World to buy a new laptop and hope that I wouldn't lose my mind. SO what was that zoom call about well a bunch of members in the small-business community I was coaching in were taking a ChatGPT course with Bryan Bowman and they would have questions. Who was supposed to answer those questions oh ya that would be me. There was just one little problem, I was struggling to keep up with ChatGPT myself.

The more people started learning, the more I realized I was going to have to figure this thing out, and in a hurry. So I decided I better get serious about learning it, not because I had some brilliant plan to build AI products or because I thought the world needed another person teaching ChatGPT. The Good Lord knows we’ve got enough of those. I needed to understand what people were learning so I could actually help them when they had questions. But somewhere along the way, I started seeing what was possible. I’d spent years helping small-business owners work through problems, figure out what to do next, and actually get things finished.

And I started wondering what would happen if I could take some of that experience and build something people could use whenever they needed help. Not another course they likely will never finish, a PDF full of generic prompts, but something that could actually walk them through getting a job done. That idea eventually became my ChatGPT Thread Starters.

I Didn't Ask AI What Small Business Owners Struggle With

I already knew what people struggled with. I had been with them virtually in chat in the middle of the night when they were crying over shipping, couldn't find suppliers, or just needed someone to say it is ok to be afraid.

By the time the community closed I'd spent years listening to them tell me their struggles, I knew the business owner who had plenty of inventory but couldn't figure out what to post, I knew the person who had made something wonderful but couldn't explain why somebody should buy it, I knew the seller who needed sales this week, not another six-month business plan, and I knew the person sitting at their computer with seventeen things that needed doing and absolutely no idea which one mattered most.

Those are real problems and they're the kinds of problems I wanted my Thread Starters to help solve.

So I Started Building a Knowledge Database

I spent months organizing what I'd learned but kept stored in my brain, the problems I'd seen asked over and over, the questions people asked, the things that worked and the things that didn't, and most importantly the questions I would ask someone before recommending what they should do next. Because that's something I think gets missed in a lot of AI products. The first question matters. If someone tells you they need more sales, the answer isn't automatically to post more on Facebook.

• Maybe their product listing doesn't make sense.
• Maybe they're talking to the wrong people.
• Maybe nobody understands what they're selling.
• Maybe they've got something that could sell right now, but they're spending all their time making something new.
• You can't give everybody the same answer and expect it to work.

So I used that knowledge to develop the instructions and workflows behind my Thread Starters and yes, it took months. Because I wasn't interested in making fifty generic prompts and calling it a product.

What Exactly Is a Thread Starter?

A Thread Starter is a guided conversation you open in your own ChatGPT account. Instead of staring at an empty chat box trying to figure out what to ask, you start with a specific business problem. Then the conversation helps you work through it.

For example, let's say you've made a product and have absolutely no idea how to sell it. You could spend an afternoon searching for marketing ideas, ask ChatGPT to write a sales post and hope it gives you something useful, or you could open I Made It. Help Me Sell It.

That Thread Starter is designed to help you work with the product you've already made, figure out what's needed, and create materials you can actually use to sell it and that's the difference I'm trying to make. Less collecting advice. More finishing work.

They're Not All Trying to Solve the Same Problem

I started building individual Thread Starters because small-business owners don't all need the same help, some days you need content, some days you need to figure out your pricing, some days you've got a product ready to go and need somebody to help you sell the thing and some days you just need help deciding what the hell you're supposed to be working on.

That's why I created tools like:

I Don't Know What to Post

For the business owner who needs something useful to publish but can't figure out what to say.

I Made It. Help Me Sell It.

For the person who already has a product and needs help putting it in front of potential customers.

What Should I Work on Today?

For the days when everything feels important and nothing is getting finished.

Help Me Price This

For business owners trying to figure out what they actually need to charge.

Turn This Product Into 5 Posts

For people who need more than one way to talk about something they're selling.

Each one has a specific job and they're designed to help you get that job done.

Here's Something Important About Your Privacy

Because I spent months building my knowledge database, I want to make something very clear.

My Thread Starters do not connect to that database when you use them.

I used my experience and the information I'd organized to develop the instructions behind them. Once you open a Thread Starter in your own ChatGPT account, you're having your conversation in ChatGPT. I'm not sitting on the other end watching what you type. I don't receive your business information or get a copy of your private conversation just because you're using one of my Thread Starters.

You control what you choose to share with me and if you want to share with me definitely send me a message so I can cheer with you. Of course, ChatGPT itself processes conversations according to OpenAI's policies and your account settings. You should always be thoughtful about entering sensitive business or personal information into any online service. But buying a Thread Starter from me doesn't give me access to your private chats and I think that's important for people to understand.

Why Not Just Ask ChatGPT Yourself?

You absolutely can and I encourage people to learn how to use ChatGPT. But here's what I've noticed. A lot of people don't struggle because they can't type a question. They struggle because they don't know which questions need to be asked next. If you ask ChatGPT to help you sell a product, you might get a perfectly nice marketing plan. But what if the real problem is your pricing, or your product description, or the fact that you're trying to sell something to people who don't need it? That's where experience makes a difference.

My goal was to build tools that guide the conversation through the problem instead of simply producing a nice-looking answer to the first question. Are they magic? Nope. You still have to provide information, make decisions, and actually do the work, but you don't have to start every problem from scratch.

I Want Small Business Owners to Finish More Things

That's really what all of this comes down to. I don't want somebody buying a Thread Starter just so they can say they bought another business tool. I want them to use it seriously I want the person who hasn't posted in two weeks to finally get something published, the maker with a pile of finished products to start putting those products in front of buyers, the overwhelmed business owner to figure out what matters today and actually finish it. And I want people to spend less time trying to figure out what to do and more time doing the things that might move their businesses forward because you probably don't need another idea. You need help finishing the ones you've already got and that's exactly why I built the Thread Starters.

Want to Try One?

If you've got a business problem you've been putting off because you don't know where to start, take a look at my ChatGPT Thread Starters. They're built around the everyday problems small-business owners actually deal with. Pick the one that matches what you're struggling with, open it in your ChatGPT account, and get to work.

And if you don't know where to start, I Don't Know What to Post is a good place to begin if content is what's holding you up because sometimes the hardest part of running a small business isn't knowing what you want to accomplish. It's figuring out how to get the damn thing done.

Coach Julia